How the other half lives
by bhut
Summary: AU. In a world where the Watchers Council and the ARC have to share London, sometimes very unusual situations can come up. Minor spoilers for Primeval S5.


**How the other half lives**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to their respective owners._

And the moon had set, and the sun had risen, and it was the morning of a new day. Save for Rupert Giles, who was busy sleeping-off his hangover, everybody at the new British Watchers' Council HQ was up (excluding the brownies, which never truly went to sleep in the first place).

"So, what we were talking about last night?" Dawn innocently asked.

"That your friend will need a pickle or two to deal with his hangover this morning?" Helen asked just as innocently, causing Dawn to pout indignantly and Buffy to giggle over her share of breakfast.

"No! We were going to talk about ettins! And fairies!" Dawn said indignantly. "But mostly about ettins."

"Very well. What are they?" Helen asked Dawn politely, startling the teenager.

"Don't look at me," Buffy told her sister. "I don't research monsters, I just slay them, remember?"

"Giles has a hangover and won't be very talkative either, and I don't know my mythical beasts all that well," Helen added, just as helpfully.

"Fine," Dawn said curtly, but then toned down her indignation a bit. "Seriously, though, we should wait for Giles instead, I think. Most of what I was able to find is that the ettins are a race of giants, two-headed-"

"-but smaller than King Kong?" Helen interrupted rather rudely.

"Well, yes," Dawn nodded thoughtfully. "Probably a lot smaller. And, despite having two heads, they're quite dim, fighters rather than thinkers."

"Sounds like minions to me," Buffy said thoughtfully. "Maybe giant-sized minions, but minions nevertheless."

"And the human part of what Puck told me?" Dawn asked and fell silent, belatedly remembering that she never truly told about her visitor to Buffy and the others, fearing that Buffy may overreact – and she was correct.

"What about him?" she asked in her 'big sister' voice. "Dawn, London may not have a Hellmouth, but it doesn't mean you can make friends just like that!" she snapped her fingers.

"Yes I can!" Dawn snapped curtly. "I mean what the worst that can happen? I'll get kidnapped and you'll rescue me-"

"Dawn, you cannot be so flippant about your safety!" Buffy snarled. "What shall I do with you?"

"Eventually find her a husband so that she'll be his responsibility?" Helen suggested suddenly, startling both sisters. "Let's see now," she continued, ignoring their twin looks of shock, "when Nick and I got engaged and married, I was about – your age," she pointed to Buffy. "Ah, those were the days. They did take place forever and a day, but I never forgot them..." She trailed away.

The two sisters exchanged looks. "So," Dawn began, half-embarrassed and half-curious, "what-" she didn't finish the sentence, when there was a knock on the door.

"Hey!" Connor Temple said embarrassingly as he looked through an open window. "Can I come in?"

* * *

James Lester was in a sour mood, and a hang-over one to boot. Of all the faces from his past to resurface now, it had to be Rupert Giles! The only thing missing the previous day was that of Christine Johnson appearing from around the corner and hitting on him.

_But she's gone: you allowed Helen Cutter to bluff her way out of the Centre and kill her-_

"Sir, good morning." Unlike her usual, Lorraine – Lester's secretary – looked more worried and concerned, rather than her usual professional self. "How are you – feeling?"

"I'm fine," Lester glared, noticing that Lorraine snuck a look in the direction of Jess Parker, the ARC's movement coordinator, who ignored her. "I may be slightly tipsy, but it's nothing that I can't handle. Is there anything else?"

"There is – a visitor," Lorraine said, sounding rather upset. "A rather important one, I think. He's in your office."

"You're not talking about the minister while Burton's not a visitor," Lester shook his head. "Therefore, whoever that man may be, I shall be able to handle him. His name isn't Rupert Giles, is it?" he asked in an after-thought.

"No, I would say that it's not," Lorraine shook her head. "Sir-"

But Lester was past listening, even to her. He carefully pushed her aside and walked into his office, ready for a fight. "Now see here," he began very indignantly – and then he saw.

* * *

"What's all this racket is about?" Giles muttered as he descended downstairs. "Buffy, Dawn – Ms. Cutter, and what's your name, young man?"

"Uh, it's Connor, sir," Connor said weakly, unwilling reverting back to his usual, less-than-confident, self. "Nice to meet you – again," he added, helpfully.

"We've met already," Giles said crossly, largely because of his hangover. "That incident with Dawn almost getting kidnapped may've overshadowed this, but-"

"I wanted to make-up for yesterday," Connor explained. "Abby told me-"

"Never mind that, young man! I'm sure that your news can wait!" yet another male barked be-hind him. Judging from the facial expression that Connor could see on Rupert Giles' face, this didn't promise anything good in their immediate future, so he carefully stepped aside for the newcomer instead.

"Ah, Uncle Marston," Rupert Giles said with a bitterness that is reserved only for one's close relatives and family members. "What a surprise to see you!"

* * *

There was little, if any, things that could cause James Lester t shut up, even for a little bit. Not even Helen Cutter's clone army was able to do this sort of trick. However, a sight of a man-sized black cat, dressed in a suit rather similar to that of Lester's own, save of a more expensive quality, was a good attempt.

"And who are you, sir?" he asked flatly.

"My name," the giant cat purred, "is Mr. Hypnos. That's the closest a mortal like you could pronounce, at any rate. I'm here to talk."

"About what?" Lester asked skeptically, his mood darkening even further seeing the cat sitting behind his desk, in his chair. He couldn't even begin to imagine what the cost of having them cleaned from cat hair will be.

"About a man you've met recently – one Rupert Giles."

Lester opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. "I don't like Rupert Giles one bit," he confessed, "but that doesn't mean that I'm about to talk about it with a strange cat that I've never met. Lorraine," he turned to his secretary, who apparently finally braved to sneak a peak, "how did our new – how did Mr. Hypnos here, well, end up here?"

"He's the cat that wanders wherever he wants, sir," Lorraine whispered to him.

"And why did you decide to wander here?" Lester stood firm.

"Because, sir, Rupert Giles is a very interesting fellow, and you're his friend, or else he would've left you as food for the worms!" the cat hissed. "Start talking!" His originally green eyes began to glow with an eldritch yellow glow. Looking at them, Lester realized that he might be in a greater trouble than he had initially assumed.

* * *

"Uncle Marston?" Dawn replied incredulously. "But, Giles, you're a Giles! What's going on?"

"After our parents split, I took on my mother's family name," Giles' uncle replied instead. "Took on our grandfather's career too – in the navy, unlike my no-good brother, who assumed that serving England was best from behind the back of some slip of a girl."

"Hey! I'm that slip of a girl!" Buffy protested indignantly. "And I'm stronger than I look, believe it!"

"I don't doubt it," the elderly man said calmly, even though Buffy was waving their dinner table in the air to emphasize her point. "And I have no problems with that either. My quarrel with your father, lad," he turned back to Giles, "has died with him, so forgive an old man his rumblings, would you?"

"Uncle Marston, I never had any problems with you," Giles exhaled. "That said, I admit I am surprised that you decided to visit our humble abode. The last time you visited my father and me, the two of you had a, well, a shouting match and you foreswore visiting us forevermore!"

"Yes, well, I admit if it was just a social call, I would've invited you to my place instead," for the first time the admiral appeared to be just a bit sheepish and human, "but – it isn't. One of my submarines tangled with some sort of a weird strangeness in the North Sea, and this is – or rather was – your father's thing. So, can you please go and take a look at it? Take your people as well, if I remember correctly how your council works-"

"Eh, sir," Dawn spoke timidly, looking askance at Connor Temple. "Maybe you should be talking it to the Anomaly Research Center. It may be their kind of weirdness-"

"James Lester is a bureaucrat that had grown all too numerous in her Majesty's government lately," the admiral shook his head. "No, I don't need strangers, when I have family. Lad?" he looked at Giles again.

"Very well," Giles nodded solemnly. "We will come. Mr. Temple, you're with us!"

* * *

"Excuse me!" a polite female voice spoke up suddenly, startling man and cat, "is Mr. Hypnos still with you, Mr. Lester?"

"That's one way of putting it," James Lester was relieved, but he was recovering fast. "Jess, what you're doing here?"

"Good question," the giant cat nodded. "Haven't we met, about three centuries ago, in Venice?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jess said promptly, "but Ms. Lorraine has told me to give you this coffee – for your refreshment."

"My favorite!" the cat said, grinning fondly at the rather acrid, if not toxic, smell of the cup of the brew that Jess pushed towards him. "Somebody clearly has met me before and knows what I like!"

Lester almost stared. Not only did the cat's smile made him look positively villainous, but it appeared that his teeth had a rather steely glint to them, which was even more disturbing.

"Look," he said plaintively, "it's not that I'm looking for a fight with you, it's just that I have seen Rupert Giles – not counting yesterday – on average three decades ago. That's a lot in human terms!"

"Fair enough," the cat nodded, apparently having mellowed down himself, "I'll consider myself warned against disappointment. Start talking."

Biting down on the impulse to tell this reject of Lewis Carroll's quill to bugger off instead, James Lester began to speak.

* * *

"Giles," Buffy spoke carefully, as the two of them, followed by the others (including Dawn) descended down the submarine hatch. "Far it is for me to argue with the federal government, but working in a submarine? Really?"

"I'm sorry, Buffy, but you are right: it is, essentially, an officially unofficial governmental request, and Watchers' Council always did its best to comply with the government, probably since the times of the Tudors, and now, with us being what is left of it in England-"

"It's politics," Dawn said wisely, "politics. Um, Ms. Cutter – were Tudors in _Richard II _or _Richard III_?"

"It's Dr. Cutter, please," Helen muttered, then abruptly turned and faced Connor who was aping her. "And Connor Temple here will be happy to explain to you about the Tudors."

"I am?" Connor asked incredulously, since he understood Tudors about as well as a pig understands oranges.

"You are. After all, you are taking Abby to see the new play of the Royal Theatre Company about the war of the Roses," Buffy replied instead.

"I am?" Connor repeated, even more incredulously.

"Well, maybe not that play, but you're taking her out tonight as an appreciation of your relationship," Buffy admitted, grudgingly.

"I am?" Connor repeated for the third time, and regretted it, as now everybody, including the crew of the submarine, stared. "Yes, I am. Um, can we be talking about someone else now?"

"Certainly," Giles nodded in relief: in some ways, while combining the best characteristics of Xander and Willow, Connor had some of their worse ones too. "I am guessing that you're the captain of this submarine-"

"Officer Yates, sir," the Navy officer nodded solemnly. "This is my first mate, Officer Shaw. I admit, when I have contacted my superiors, that we'd be receiving somebody else-"

"Yes, well, that's mutual," Buffy glared at him. "We sort of thought that a submarine will be manned by more than just four marines."

"We're just a skeleton crew," Captain Yates flushed. "Normally there'd be much more of us manning this vessel. But after encountering this sort of a glowing sphere deep underwater, most of our equipment has stopped working due to some sort of a magnetic interference-"

"That sounds like a time anomaly!" Connor said excitedly. "I'll contact Mr. Lester and-"

"No," Giles said curtly.

"No?"

"No," Giles reiterated his statement. "We can deal with this by ourselves."

"We can?" Connor asked of Helen Cutter of all people.

"Yup," Helen pulled out her own time anomaly manifestation device. "We can."

"Glad to hear this," captain Yates said dryly. "Incidentally, something had come through that glowing sphere and ended onboard of our ship. Do you think you can identify it as well?"

* * *

"What shall we do? Oh my, oh my, what shall we do?" Lorraine whispered in panic to Jess. "It's Somnus himself, in one of his deadlier aspects having coffee with James Lester, the only politician in the entire Great Britain with a spine!"

"Look," Jess shook her impromptu partner-in-crime, "it's okay, I swear. Neither of them is really unreasonable, they took the measure of each other and are civil to each other as well. Well, as civil as two men of their kind can be."

"What are you talking about? James Lester is talking to a giant humanoid cat!" Becker spoke up suddenly, startling the two women. "We're unlucky that Connor isn't here, or else he probably would've figured out a cunning plan of some sort."

There was a pause as Jess and Lorraine alternated looking at each and Becker. Finally, Jess spoke. "And where are Abby and Matt?"

"Currently away from here, interviewing candidates for the PR position," Becker admitted. "Apparently, the minister had called Lester sometime yesterday regarding our latest demolition event and criticized him very, very acutely. So now Matt and Abby-"

"We get it," Jess interrupted him. "Look, Lorraine and I are trying to keep our feline visitor in a good mood-"

"Why? Besides the obvious?" Becker didn't budge.

"Because – because he has the power to put everyone to sleep within a seven mile radius, or to madness, and he has claws and teeth of steel?" Jess didn't back down.

"I wonder what an EMD will think of all that?" Becker didn't back down either.

"He's a demigod!"

"So we should be applying some holy water and a cross as well?"

Surprisingly, both Jess and Lorraine blanched a bit.

"I, uh, nowhere virtuous enough for something like that," Lorraine quickly replied.

"I'm an agnostic nowadays, really," muttered Jess. "Besides, he can see and hear around for seven miles when he wants to, as well."

"Fine," Becker wasn't backing down, "but this isn't over yet." With these words he stalked off.

"He's going to have us killed," Lorraine hissed to Jess.

The younger woman just gave her a look before stalking off in another direction.

"Oh, dear."

* * *

"Oh, no," exclaimed Helen when she saw the stunned dinosaur. "That's very bad."

"Why? It's just a dinosaur, and I can't believe that I just said that," Dawn blinked. "I thought that it'd be bigger."

"I've seen the adults, and they aren't much bigger than this subadult," Helen exhaled. "They lived on the islands in the shallow seas during the end of the Jurassic time period, when they were hunted by, what's their name? Ah yes, pliosaurs."

There was a pause as everybody else thought about Helen's words.

"Is it bad?" Buffy tentatively asked.

"Very," Connor answered instead. "Ever heard of the Predator X? No? Then I can say that we're talking about a class of animals whose maximum size rivaled that of our sub, armed with jaws and teeth powerful and sharp enough to possibly bite a chunk of that sub as well. Add to that the fact that we have to shut down the time anomaly by hand, and-"

"How are you going to seal it?" Buffy asked with concern. "Your device-"

"You got a diver's suit? And a hatch from which to exit into the water?" Helen exhaled as she asked Captain Yates.

"Yes," the man frowned in thought.

"There you have it," Helen said, smiling slightly. "If it needs to be closed manually, then it will be closed manually."

"By me," Buffy said in a vocal tone that brooked no argument.

"No, Buffy," Helen smiled warmly. "You'll be here fitting the dinosaur into a torpedo tube so that the good captain can fire it through the time anomaly as well."

Buffy blinked and took a double-take at the still-comatose dinosaur. "Say what?"

* * *

James Lester was getting steadily pissed. He has the entire morning revisiting memory lane, in particular the bits and pieces that he spent the best part of his adult life burying, rather than praising, in order to placate... well, he didn't know whom he was placating, or why, but he was get-ting steadily pissed by this course of events.

"And that's the end of it, save for yesterday, but you're already aware of that, aren't you?" he finished flatly.

"Yes indeed," the cat replied with the sort of a feline grace that reminded Lester of one of his wife's cats, when they were stalking sparrows. He didn't like that memory either.

"You have any questions you want to ask me?" the cat meanwhile spoke, smirking all the while. "Ask."

"Very well," Lester nodded solemnly. "Next time we meet, you want me to treat you as a cat – or as a man?"

The cat bent his ears backwards and hissed: apparently, Lester's sarcasm had scored a direct hit... and now he was going to be hit directly in his turn.

Hmm. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea-

"Mr. Lester? How are things?" Becker asked as he entered Lester's cabinet, instead of Lorraine.

"Just fine, our visitor is leaving now," Lester muttered, as he backed away from the obviously enraged feline. "Right?"

"Yes," the cat hissed, when Becker stepped aside and in trotted a dog. And not just any dog, but the biggest dog of the ARC: the Brazilian mastiff that the Centre's dog trainer had a personal pet.

The cat began to chuckle, but the chuckle died in his throat when the dog stepped forwards, growling softly back. For several moments it and the cat just stared at each other, and then the cat backed down. "I'll be back," he promised softly, before... ripping some sort of a hole in the fabric of the universe (i.e. creating something like a mini-time anomaly) stepping through this hole and vanishing through it without a trace.

"So that's how he was able to get into your office without anyone noticing," Becker said thoughtfully.

"Lorraine!"

* * *

"I'm getting too old for this" Helen mused to herself, as she swam through the waters of the North sea, keeping an eye on the pliosaur, the underwater time anomaly and the submarine at the same time, going into the position and hoping that the prehistoric monster had scared away any of its modern counterparts.

And there was a good chance of that. Easily 11 meters long, the pliosaur wasn't as big as some of its relatives that Helen had seen in the Jurassic seas and its coloration was duller – possibly a subadult rather than a full-grown one. However, it was capable of giving a fair fight even to the submarine, particularly as it was suffering equipment failures from the proximity of the time anomaly.

The pliosaur, meanwhile, had seen Helen as well, and was slowly approaching her, keeping an eye on the submarine and the time anomaly as well. As he was halfway between them, and Helen was beginning to worry for real, the submarine's torpedo tube fired, and out of it – and straight into the time anomaly came the dinosaur, swimming as fast as it could, and reeking of shark repellent that the pliosaurs such as this one actually found irresistible.

Immediately, the pliosaur stopped approaching Helen and charged after the fleeing theropod as fast as it could, and that was fast. In under a minute the giant marine reptile entered the time anomaly and was gone.

The next moment the time anomaly itself was gone, sealed shut by Helen's time anomaly manifestation device – and then it was truly over.

* * *

"You know," Dawn mused as the submarine was going back, "that was surprisingly straightforward – no muss, no fuss, just a lot of calculations and proper timing. Is this how it goes on your missions?" she turned to Connor.

"Actually, yeah," the young man nodded. "Usually it's less so calculating – that's just Helen – but, yes, our main goal is to send the creatures back through the time anomaly safe and sound, without anyone, either us or them, getting hurt. That's if they're from the past – if they're from the future, then it is safe to kill the bastards dead before they kill us."

"Fascinating," Giles began to clean his spectacles. "Well, at least we'll be able to give Admiral Marston the good news."

The submarine quickly flew through the water.

A small group of merfolk, swimming much deeper than the sub, followed it with thoughtful gazes.

End


End file.
